TY - JOUR
T1 - Some Consequences of Having Too Little
JF - Science
JO - Science
SP - 682
LP - 685
DO - 10.1126/science.1222426
VL - 338
IS - 6107
AU - Shah, Anuj K.
AU - Mullainathan, Sendhil
AU - Shafir, Eldar
Y1 - 2012/11/02
UR - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6107/682.abstract
N2 - Poor individuals often engage in behaviors, such as excessive borrowing, that reinforce the conditions of poverty. Some explanations for these behaviors focus on personality traits of the poor. Others emphasize environmental factors such as housing or financial access. We instead consider how certain behaviors stem simply from having less. We suggest that scarcity changes how people allocate attention: It leads them to engage more deeply in some problems while neglecting others. Across several experiments, we show that scarcity leads to attentional shifts that can help to explain behaviors such as overborrowing. We discuss how this mechanism might also explain other puzzles of poverty.
ER -